


Hiltak

by Gyptian



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Episode: s02e05 Amok Time, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 21:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11022045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: Halfway to the bridge, Kirk dropped his cavalier grin and paused to regard his first officer. He laid a hand on Spock's arm, an inch short of where the sleeve stopped. “Will you be alright?” he asked quietly.I suppose everyone writes an Amok Time epilogue at some point. This is my take on a "canon" tag.





	Hiltak

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sonder: The Realisation That Everyone Has A Story (video)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/294120) by John Koenig. 



 

Halfway to the bridge, Kirk dropped his cavalier grin and paused to regard his first officer. He laid a hand on Spock's arm, an inch short of where the sleeve stopped. “Will you be alright?” he asked quietly.

 

Spock bowed his head. “Perhaps.”

 

“Do you need leave? To...” Kirk considered his choice of words. “Meditate?” While he had no trouble navigating proverbial unknown seas by unfamiliar stars so long as he had a compass, Spock's acknowledgement of emotions, particularly his own, made the magnetic poles shift until even Kirk checked twice before proceeding.

 

“No. I do not...” Spock swallowed. “Routine, Captain, would be welcome.”

 

That, Kirk could work with. “Well, let's see about our orders and what impact our surprise visit to Vulcan had.” A light judder at the glancing mention of his near-death made its way down his spine to his toes, where it curled up and made them tingle, making him oddly aware of every habitual step towards the bridge.

 

“Yes, Captain,” said Spock, something like relief and something like weariness sitting as hints of spices in the well-brewed coffee of his steady voice. Kirk encouraged him to relate to him the original list of research priorities for their current turn in limbo between planetary visits. The baritone washed over him, refreshing and clarifying but a little distant, the information already mostly familiar.

 

He let out a breath as he stepped into the heart of his life, the bridge of his Enterprise. He blinked at the sight of round ears and pink skins, mild contortions flitting over concentrated faces as fingers tapped and eyes skimmed over screens. He felt the breeze of slightly cool air, calculated to keep a human crew awake and focused, chill the exposed skin of his hands and neck, until goosebumps rushed down his back and arms.

 

He heard Spock stutter and _stop,_ looked at him and saw Spock, looked back at the rest of the crew and saw aliens, humans, aliens... people, he decided. But strange ones, outside of the norm, somehow, speaking in soft-edged consonants and wide, flowing vowels of which he understood every word and he realised it was Standard, English, which he heard and spoke every day.

 

He looked back at Spock, unable to express the alienation he felt in that moment, but, in looking at Spock, realised. He'd been on a hot planet, among pointy-eared people whose sharp words had filtered through the translator with an extra edge to them, flowing from between lips set in blank faces of lightly olive-skinned people. It had been alien, which had been normal.

 

But. For Spock. It should have been normal, but wasn't. Should have brought healing, but had brought trauma. Should have been the acknowledgement that he was _Vulcan_. Pon Farr should have given him that, if nothing else.

 

Instead, here he was, back to work, alive when he shouldn't be, single when he shouldn't be, in his right mind when he shouldn't be, on a ship where he shouldn't be, in possession of a live friend by the name of Jim Kirk when he shouldn't be. 

 

In other words, Spock radiated a sense of displacement like nobody's business and Kirk realised he was along for the ride, just a bit.

 

Kirk glanced at the crew one more time. Still strange. So. Pretend normality or confront strangeness? He smirked. “Spock, my quarters.” He turned on his heel and walked back off the bridge. The yellow-shirted lieutenant standing at attention in front of the Captain's chair gaped after them.

 

Soft footfalls echoed his as he proceeded down the corridor, greeting pink, tooth-exhibiting aliens he'd worked with for years. By the time he reached his door, he decided he could appreciate the novelty. Not every day a Captain got to see his crew with fresh eyes. He still wanted it to stop.

 

So he let Spock settle in front of his desk, poured out a half-measure of good whiskey for himself and Altair water in a tumbler for Spock, plopped in his own chair, folded his hands and declared, “You're not going to get out of that state of mind by pretending everything is fine.”

 

Spock stared at him blankly.

 

“You're projecting, just a bit.”

 

The eyes dropped, the rest of Spock remained the same.

 

“Spock, Spock.” He sat forward. “It's alright. I'm just getting a sense of... of hiltak.” He dug up the word from a dusty Academy memory and hoped it would ease his mind. “It's not bad, it was just a surprise to have it suddenly happen on the bridge, rather than on an away mission.”

 

The eyes climbed back up to ask what he meant, a slight squint propping up an inquisitive eyebrow.

 

“That word... did not translate.”

 

Kirk exhaled, not quite a laugh, rubbed his hands through his hair. “Yeah, no, it's a word Saunders made up.” He checked to see if the name of his xeno-anthropology professor was recognised. “Said he needed a word to indicate the opposite of subconscious anthropo-centrism. Y'know, being able to place ourselves in another species' shoes.”

 

“Ah.” The corned of Spock's mouth ticked upwards by a millimeter. Kirk's shoulders lost some of their tension at the sight. He had him engaged now, the curious bastard. “He does have a propensity for making up words in his papers, as well. This one I had not heard before.”

 

Kirk finally felt able to go for his glass and take a generous swallow. Calm waters, now. “You wouldn't, not in off-Earth journals. It's a word he uses only to tell us humans we need to get our head out of our asses when we go off world so as not to be a bunch of entitled, colonising empire builders.”

 

“I see.” Spock picked up his water, eyes unfocusing while he processed. Kirk left him to it.

 

After a few minutes, an empty glass was deposited back onto Kirk's desk, and Spock's fingers pressed against their counterparts in front of his chin. “You... picked up on how I regard the crew.”

 

“I guess, I mean. All the humans must look as strange to you as all the Vulcans did to me just now, even after long exposure.” He rubbed his hair again, hesitating over words to phrase that better, but... well, there was a reason Saunders made up words. Even after several decades of interplanetary exploration, the language still had to catch up to the experience of being a part of the Federation and a big, big universe.

 

Spock shook his head. “No... I...” He _blinked,_ Kirk noted in surprise, an actual reflexive reaction followed by another considering silence. “While it is to a lesser extent, Vulcans also feel strange to me. Rather, I feel myself to be apart from them as well, though it is a shorter distance than with other species.” He swallowed. “I feel hiltak at all times, if you will. I am... inbetween, son of a Vulcan and a human.”

 

Kirk sat back. “But...” He decided to dive right in, unknown waters be damned. “Where do you belong, then? What... who... _where_ is _your_ place?”

 

“If I knew that, Captain, I would tell you.” He glanced around the spacious, if bland, officer's quarters. “I suppose the Enterprise is as close as I come to a place to belong, when I am an alien wherever I go.”

 

They stared at each other, acknowledgment of a new truth shared between them, settling in amongst the other facts their friendship had let them explore. Kirk finished off his drink with a happy sigh.

 

“You know...” he said to the ceiling, slumping back in his chair.

 

“I do not,” replied Spock, more lightly than he had since before his strange mood had even been acknowledged as the beginning of Pon Farr.

 

“You're not other... you're not _an alien._ You are... Spock.” Kirk opened his mouth but couldn't find other words to describe it. He clenched his hands in frustration on the armrests and heaved himself upright. Leave it to him to make something trite out of how close he felt to his friend. How it had not eliminated the fact of his species but utterly obliterated the distance between them.

 

Spock, however, nodded his head as if in acknowledgement of a gift and replied. “Indeed. As you are Jim.”

 

“Yeah.” Kirk couldn't help but grin, able to tell, though not quite knowing how, that a thick wrapping of isolation fell away from them, leaving them as they had always been. “Chess?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hilt'k * 1.1 The moment you realise an alien culture is as complex as yours, with as much potential for diversity as your species, as much richness of history, as many dreams of the future, as many expectations and preconceptions looking up and out at the stars as yours. 1.2 The first time you see your own species as one of many.  
> 2.1 The ability to dispense with ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism. 2.2 The shift in point of view from that of your native species to a more neutral and fluid identification with one or more species or an interspecies or multispecies identity.  
> 3.1 The sensation of belonging to more than one species.
> 
> A tribute to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, most especially for introducing words for Socha (hidden vulnerability of others) and Sonder (realising other people live lives as complex as yours), two concepts that needed words badly. I made up the title word.


End file.
